Biden Aides Testify before Congress and plead the Fifth in front of a grand jury, but they don t remember anything. Plus, the mandonification of the Democratic Party continues apace, and we are joined by Dr. Mehmed Oz to announce a massive move by the Trump administration for health transparency, transparency, and medical records release.
00:00:00.000All righty, folks, news breaking fast and furious.
00:00:02.000Today, on the Ben Shapiro show, Joe Biden's aides are now testifying before Congress, and they're pleading the fifth and are not recalling things.
00:00:09.000And that is not a shock because they are covering up one of the great scandals in American history.
00:00:13.000Plus, the mandonification of the Democratic Party, the radicalism of the Democratic Party, continues apace.
00:00:18.000Plus, we are joined by Dr. Mehmed Oz to announce a massive move by the Trump administration for health transparency, medical records release, and all the rest first.
00:00:27.000This month, Daily Wire Plus is giving you more than ever before.
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00:00:42.000No celebrities, no headlines, just real people, real problems, and real answers.
00:00:46.000Coming August 13th, the Pope and the Führer, the secret Vatican Files Plus, this fall, Isabel Brown launches her brand new show on the Daily Wire.
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00:01:00.000Well, while the political world has been consumed with talk about Jeffrey Epstein or Russia Gate, the truth is that the biggest scandal continuously hiding in plain sight is the fact that for several years, we did not have a president of the United States.
00:01:16.000And that is coming out more and more every single day.
00:01:19.000Yesterday, there was a House hearing that called in Biden aides to testify about what they knew when they knew it.
00:01:27.000Was President Biden with it at all for years at a time?
00:01:31.000And you had people around Biden, of course, trying to protect themselves because if it turns out they facilitated a senile human in being president of the United States so that they could sign what they wanted while he was mentally absent, well, that would presumably be some sort of crime.
00:01:48.000Well, yesterday, as we say, there were a bunch of people who testified.
00:01:51.000One of those people was Steve Roschetti.
00:01:53.000Steve Roschetti was a counselor to the president.
00:01:55.000And his opening statement was this: quote, the Trump administration's efforts to taint President Biden's legacy with baseless assertions about President Biden's mental health are an obvious attempt to deflect from the chaos of this administration's first six months.
00:02:08.000The committee's investigation is part of a concerted effort by the administration and its congressional allies to diminish the record of the former president by advancing the false narrative that President Biden was mentally unable to perform his constitutional duties and that members of his staff usurped the president's Article II powers.
00:02:24.000Let me be clear: at all times during his presidency, I believed that President Biden was fully capable of exercising his presidential duties and responsibilities and that he did so.
00:02:33.000Neither I nor anyone else usurped President Biden's constitutional duties, which he faithfully and fully carried out each and every day.
00:02:41.000Well, then, that solves nothing because you just say that you believed that he was with it.
00:02:48.000You're going to go to jail if you didn't believe that he was with it.
00:02:52.000According to Roschetti, senior White House staff kept the president fully informed so he could provide direction and make all important decisions.
00:02:59.000I firmly believe that at all times during my four years in the White House, President Biden was fulfilling his constitutional duties.
00:03:05.000Did he stumble occasionally, make mistakes, get up on the wrong side of the bed?
00:03:12.000Well, I mean, that is a rather generous assessment of the situation, especially given the fact that according to CNN, earlier this month, three Biden aides, White House physician, Dr. Kevin O'Connor, former assistant to the president and senior advisor to the first lady Anthony Bernal, and former assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff, Annie Tomasini, pled the fifth in the face of questions from the panel.
00:03:33.000As you will recall, invoking the Fifth Amendment typically is a way to prevent yourself from being incriminated.
00:03:40.000Now, there's more information from CNN here that is kind of shocking.
00:03:44.000Apparently, Ron Clain, the former Biden chief of staff, told the committee last week that Hillary Clinton expressed concerns to him in 2023 that Joe Biden's age was an issue the campaign had not dealt with effectively, and that Jake Sullivan, the NSA, told him in 2024, after the presidential debate, that Biden wasn't as effective as he had once been.
00:04:06.000Klain also told the committee he believed Biden had the mental sharpness to serve as president and saw no reason to doubt Biden's mental acuity.
00:04:14.000But again, according to a source familiar with an interview, an interview between Ashley Williams, a former special assistant to the president and deputy director of Oval Office Operations, she said for a transcribed interview with the committee.
00:04:28.000Apparently, she told the committee she believes Biden was in command the night of the debate and was fit to be president, including now.
00:04:34.000However, the source also said that Williams stated she did not recall many times during her five-hour interview to several questions.
00:05:28.000I shouldn't use the word sitting when I'm talking about the president in a wheelchair, but he was the sitting president of the United States.
00:05:33.000If there were a conversation in the White House today about whether Donald Trump should use a wheelchair, do you think the people in that room might recall that in the future?
00:05:49.000If she discussed Biden declining physically or mentally, she doesn't recall whether she ever had that conversation.
00:05:54.000If she ever had to wake Biden up again, we are talking here about a former special assistant to the president and deputy director of Oval Office Operations saying she did not recall if she ever had to wake Joe Biden up.
00:06:09.000I promise you, if you never had to wake the president up, you would just say you never had to wake the president up.
00:06:16.000She also said she didn't recall how she got involved in his 2020 campaign.
00:06:21.000She even said that she would not say that a good memory was an important trait for working at the White House.
00:06:26.000And that is a way of attacking two separate issues.
00:06:29.000One is, If you keep saying, I don't recall, to very obvious things, should you have been working there?
00:06:33.000And number two, do you think the president could recall anything?
00:06:36.000And if so, if you think that he had memory problems, should he be in the White House?
00:06:41.000And she's like, well, I don't think it's important to be able to remember things.
00:06:44.000I don't even know what we're talking about right now.
00:06:47.000The committee is expected to transcribe interviews with additional high-level aides next week, including with former deputy chief of staff for policy Bruce Reed on Tuesday and former senior advisor to the president for communications inita dunn on Thursdays.
00:06:59.000That investigation is going to continue and it's going to continue to damage the Democrats.
00:07:03.000Democrats still do not have a good answer on all of this.
00:07:06.000It is a sin that is indeed original to the Democratic Party and very difficult to escape because it encompasses pretty much the entirety of the Democratic Party.
00:07:16.000There is a reason that you have people like Pete Buttigieg, who's a member of the cabinet, who is trying to run deliberately away from this.
00:07:27.000He told NPR's Steve Inske: I told the truth, which is that he was old.
00:07:35.000All righty, folks, coming up, the insane leftism of the Democratic Party is now evident on every issue from the Gaza Strip to illegal immigration.
00:07:43.000Well, unfortunately, in this country, privacy has now become a luxury.
00:07:46.000To be honest, that's a real shame because privacy is a prereq to freedom.
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00:10:09.000Had former Vice President Kamala Harris actually run for California governor, she would have had to answer those questions, but that is the other piece of breaking news today.
00:10:15.000California is not going to have to be subjected to Kamala Harris as the governor.
00:10:20.000There's a lot of talk about her running for governor after her failed vice presidency.
00:10:23.000She put out a statement in which she said, quote, in recent months, I've given serious thought to asking the people of California for the privilege to serve as their governor.
00:10:32.000I love this state, its people, and its promise.
00:10:48.000The thing about Kamala Harris is that as far to the left as Kamala Harris was, and she was really far to the left, she is not far enough to the left for the Democratic Party now.
00:10:56.000The Democratic Party has become the BDS, pro-Hamas, pro-illegal immigration party.
00:11:01.000And they are having a very difficult time.
00:11:03.000They are the party of Sidney Sweeney's breasts make you a Nazi.
00:11:07.000This is what the Democratic Party is becoming in real time.
00:11:09.000I don't know what was in the water, but whatever they drank made them insane, totally crazy.
00:11:16.000Harris said she will share more details in the months ahead about her plans.
00:11:21.000I mean, if there's one thing the American people want more of, it's Kamala Harris in politics.
00:11:26.000She says, as we look ahead, we must be willing to pursue change through new methods and fresh thinking, committed to our same values and principles, but not bound by the same playbook.
00:11:38.000But of course, Kamala Harris was not going to run for California governor because, again, even if she ran, being California governor after Gavin Newsom means that she is now delayed from running for president if she wanted to.
00:11:50.000And again, I'm not sure that there is a guarantee she was going to end up as California governor.
00:11:53.000Was she going to win a primary in California?
00:12:25.000There was a bill that was put up by Democrats, a resolution rather, to block weapon sales to Israel.
00:12:31.000By the way, that is not about military aid.
00:12:33.000That is about whether Israel should be allowed to buy weapons from the United States with its own money.
00:12:39.000More than half of Senate Democrats voted for two resolutions to block weapon sales to Israel.
00:12:45.000That is how crazy the Democratic Party is.
00:12:47.000It's being led by, of course, Senator Bernie Sanders.
00:12:50.000Bernie Sanders is, as I've said, a thousand times as Jewish as a ham sandwich.
00:12:54.000He has no commitment to anything Judaic.
00:12:55.000The fact that he was born in an ethnically Jewish household means nothing to me.
00:13:01.000Jewishness actually has some aspects of, you know, culture, behavior, religiosity.
00:13:05.000Bernie Sanders has none of those things.
00:13:08.000Bernie Sanders went on the floor of the Senate, by the way, and continued to repeat an overt lie that we talked about on the show a couple of days ago, this picture that went around the world of a kid with cystic fibrosis being posed as though he was dying of starvation in Gaza.
00:14:24.000The propagandistic release of false information designed to suggest that Israel is in fact committing a genocide when, in fact, Israel has shipped in literally 10 million meals since the end of May into the Gaza Strip via the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
00:14:44.000The idea that Israel is participating in mass starvation when Israel is literally the only source that is allowing food in, and the UN is blocking the entry of food because they want Hamas to steal all of it.
00:14:55.000That is being facilitated by a media that wants Hamas to win and a Democratic Party that apparently would like for Hamas to win.
00:15:01.000And again, that falls right in line with the Pod Save America bros suggesting that basically all support for the state of Israel should end immediately from the Democratic Party.
00:15:12.000It's an amazing abdication of moral duty on behalf of the Democrat, but this is where it was moving anyway.
00:15:17.000And again, for those who don't believe me, here is exclusive footage from Daily Wire from Cassie Akiva showing the aid actively being looted.
00:17:22.000And yet, apparently, the state is going to magically exist only in the aftermath of the greatest terror attack on the state of Israel in literally its entire existence.
00:17:30.000Mark Carney of Canada, and he could be a Democratic Party apparatus, given his political priors.
00:17:36.000Yesterday, he announced that they would recognize a Palestinian state at the UN.
00:17:41.000Canada intends to recognize the state of Palestine at the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025.
00:17:52.000This intention is predicated on the Palestinian Authorities' commitment to much needed reforms, including commitments by the Palestinian authorities, President Abbas, to fundamentally reform its governance, to hold general elections in 2026, in which Hamas can play no part, and to demilitarize the Palestinian state.
00:18:14.000They're not going to do any of those things.
00:18:16.000So you're going to preliminarily accept a state of Palestine that will do zero of the things that you're calling on it to do.
00:18:21.000First of all, Mahmoud Abbas is 89 years old.
00:18:23.000There's not been an election held in the Palestinian Authority-controlled area since 2006.
00:18:29.000Mahmoud Abbas is currently in year 19 of a four-year term.
00:18:33.000If they hold elections, Hamas will win.
00:18:35.000You can call it by another name, but Hamas will win.
00:18:40.000Germany is also making sounds along these lines because, again, the Europeans are just of the opinion that if you magically declare things, then bad guys go away, apparently.
00:18:50.000President Trump has said, well, you know what?
00:18:52.000If Canada is so insistent on creating another terror state in the Middle East, maybe they don't need a trade deal with us.
00:18:57.000President Trump, again, the only voice of moral clarity in our modern politics, apparently.
00:19:01.000It really is an amazing, amazing thing.
00:19:04.000The United States has also placed sanctions on both the PA and the PLO because they are terrorist organizations.
00:19:10.000Fatah is a military wing of the Palestinian Authority.
00:19:12.000The Palestinian Authority still to this day pays terrorists to kill Jews.
00:19:18.000And you have all these people who are coming out of the woodwork in favor of a Palestinian state on the basis of what?
00:19:22.000On the basis of the successful Hamas propaganda campaign in which they steal aid, murder their own people, and then blame Israel.
00:19:29.000David Makofsky Has a good thread over at X.com.
00:19:32.000He's director of the program on Arab-Israel relations at the Washington Institute of Near East Policy.
00:19:38.000And he points out anyone who supports getting more food to people in Gaza must ask tough questions of the UN.
00:19:43.000The UN itself reports 87% of its 2010 food trucks in Gaza, 85% by tonnage from May 19th to July 29th were intercepted either peacefully by crowds or forcefully by armed actors.
00:21:12.000My statements in 2020 were ones made amidst a frustration that many New Yorkers felt at the murder of George Floyd and the inability to deliver on what Eric Adams, of all people, described as the right for all of us to be able to enjoy safety and justice, that we need not choose between the two.
00:21:49.000By the way, in 2014, he said that he wanted to disband the NYPD's strategy response group, which is their way of lowering crime rate, Zor Mamdani.
00:22:06.000Ask yourself why it is the entire left agrees with Hamas, why they have decided to mobilize behind the idea that the most important thing is apparently for Hamas to retain control of the Gaza Strip.
00:22:25.000It's the queers for Palestine aspect of the left.
00:22:28.000Why are they supporting, in effect, a terrorist group, as well, by the way, as a population that continues to support terrorism against Jews on behalf of what would be another Sharia law state?
00:22:41.000And the answer, again, has to do with a coalitional approach to the destruction of the West.
00:22:48.000When I talk about my new book, Lions and Scavengers, the coalition of scavengers is very real.
00:22:52.000It has taken over the Democratic Party.
00:22:54.000It is a various coalition of third worldism, libertinism, and economic envy.
00:23:03.000And when you put all of that together, what you end up with is fellow travelers who just want to tear down the institutions of the society.
00:23:09.000And that is the Democratic Party right now.
00:23:10.000That is what the Democratic Party wants.
00:23:13.000And you can see it in every aspect of their policymaking.
00:23:17.000Now, the New York Times is a columnist who's defending actual obstruction of justice, trying to stop ICE from doing its job first.
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00:25:47.000That's helixleep.com slash Ben for 27% off-site-wide.
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00:25:57.000Go to illegal immigration for a second.
00:25:59.000When you talk about illegal Immigration.
00:26:01.000It seems pretty obvious to everybody that a country ought to have a border.
00:26:04.000Forget about what happens with the people already here.
00:26:07.000We're going to have all sorts of debates about people who have had children here or who have supposedly integrated into the economy.
00:26:12.000I'm talking about the very baseline question.
00:26:16.000Should people be allowed to illegally immigrate over our southern border?
00:26:21.000And should they be allowed to live here indefinitely?
00:26:23.000The left has taken the position that a closed border is somehow racist and wrong.
00:26:28.000And not only that, to facilitate lawbreaking is somehow good.
00:26:32.000Michelle Goldberg, another one of the execrable columnists for the New York Times, literally has a piece praising this today in the New York Times.
00:26:41.000Quote, Elizabeth Castillo wasn't an activist until immigration and customs enforcement started taking away her neighbors.
00:26:47.000It all began in June after Donald Trump directed ICE agents to sweep LA, then used scattered violence at protests of ICE tactics as a pretext to send in the military.
00:26:56.000Castillo felt her working-class neighborhood in Pasadena was under siege.
00:27:03.000Well, she decided that she was going to act.
00:27:05.000When she saw ICE vehicles in the streets, she followed them in her car, honking and shouting to warn people they were coming.
00:27:12.000She started getting up before dawn to patrol her apartment complex.
00:27:15.000Then she contacted the National Day Labor Organizing Network, which runs a nearby job center.
00:27:19.000Through them, she was plugged into a citywide network of people who are constantly tracking ICE's activities.
00:27:24.000Doing those amateur anti-ICE reconnaissance in LA are people from established nonprofits that work closely with the mayor's office.
00:27:31.000Then there are more militant groups that, beyond simply documenting ICE's operations, try to actively disrupt them.
00:27:36.000Ron Gochez, a high school teacher and spokesman for one of the more radical organizations, Union Del Barrio, said, quote, we have people patrolling all over the city, starting at 5:30 in the morning.
00:28:12.000But if this is the way the left wants to play it, then we're going to see whether Americans like it or not.
00:28:19.000I suppose they've been relegated to this far-left perspective because they've been so unsuccessful at everything else.
00:28:25.000Despite all of the suggestions that President Trump is a wild man who's going to destroy the American economy, yesterday we had those Q2 GDP numbers.
00:29:22.000And I'll tell you, it's a great, we're having a lot of fun with it.
00:29:27.000And Democrats are freaking out over all of this, obviously.
00:29:31.000The National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett also added that the GDP release is showing great strength.
00:29:37.000The story, the anti-Trump story, has been that we're going to have a recession or a depression because of the tariffs, which are going to jack up prices and cause consumers to route to the exits headed back.
00:29:49.000Every single thing about this GDP release has shown strength.
00:29:55.000Okay, and he's not wrong about all of that.
00:29:58.000Treasury Secretary Scott Besson says, listen, the economy better stay strong because on the other side, you've got a bunch of rampant socialists ready to go.
00:30:05.000Why are we on the verge of Caracas on the Hudson in New York?
00:30:38.000And here's where you have a lot of crosswinds in the Trump economy.
00:30:41.000The Wall Street Journal has an editorial talking about this GDP report.
00:30:44.000And there are some very, very salutary signs for the Trump administration.
00:30:48.000And there are also some kind of strange things about this GDP report that could signal choppy waters in the future.
00:30:54.000As the Wall Street Journal points out, most striking are second quarter reports' wild internal details.
00:30:59.000Net exports, meaning exports minus imports, added a remarkable 4.99% to GDP as imports fell 30.3%, meaning that the tariffs have meant that fewer people are importing and fewer people are buying imports, a lot of people buying domestic main product.
00:31:13.000Imports subtract from growth in the national accounts because GDP measures domestic production.
00:31:20.000But of course, imports are still crucial as inputs for businesses in the United States.
00:31:25.000The crazy swing in imports shows how much President Trump's up-and-down trade policies have disrupted business decisions and left companies scrambling to adapt.
00:31:32.000This seems to have had a negative effect on private domestic investment, which fell 15.6% in the second quarter after a surge in the first quarter.
00:31:40.000Non-residential business investment contributed only 0.27% to GDP as businesses rapidly drew down their inventories.
00:31:48.000Now, the consumer continued to spend, contributing 0.98% to GDP, which is a decent number.
00:31:56.000Final sales to private domestic purchases, which is a measure of demand, rose only 1.2%.
00:32:02.000Prices continue to remain steady, which is why you're not seeing inflation right now.
00:32:35.000The Democrats have lost their ever-loving minds.
00:32:37.000You thought that they were going to turn around after being defeated by President Trump and the Republicans and maybe get a little sanity.
00:32:42.000I've seen zero evidence that this is the case.
00:32:44.000They continue to swing out to the more and more insane left in the hopes that President Trump will collapse and basically hand them the presidency and the Congress.
00:33:12.000There was a lot of speculation that that was going to happen considering the fact that, again, President Trump is still negotiating out these tariffs and it's unclear what the effect of pricing is going to be from those tariffs.
00:33:24.000Again, one of the problems with sort of the tariffs is that one of the ways that prices stay stable, if the tariffs go into place, is that demand decreases.
00:33:32.000And so there, you would say, okay, fine.
00:33:34.000Well, then you need to jog the economy with presumably looser monetary policy.
00:33:40.000That's what President Trump is basically calling for.
00:33:41.000We'll see if that materializes next quarter.
00:33:43.000But here is Jerome Powell saying, before that happens, how to make sure the prices don't spike.
00:33:47.000Despite elevated uncertainty, the economy is in a solid position.
00:33:51.000The unemployment rate remains low, and the labor market is at or near maximum employment.
00:33:57.000Inflation has been running somewhat above our 2% longer run objective.
00:34:03.000In support of our goals, today the Federal Open Market Committee decided to leave our policy interest rate unchanged.
00:34:10.000We believe that the current stance of monetary policy leaves us well positioned to respond in a timely way to potential economic developments.
00:34:20.000Okay, so we will find out in very short order whether things change.
00:34:24.000President Trump says that he believes not only do we need to lower interest rates, but that probably next quarter we will.
00:34:30.000What you do is you lower them and let's see if there's inflation.
00:35:18.000I think we're going to have the richest economy you've ever seen.
00:35:24.000So again, certainly I hope that President Trump is right because the future of the country rides on that.
00:35:28.000If the economy goes south, then the nuts are going to take over.
00:35:33.000Well, meanwhile, the Trump administration is making strong moves in other areas.
00:35:38.000The Make America Healthy Again agenda over at the Department of Health and Human Services continues apace.
00:35:43.000One of their big moves came yesterday.
00:35:45.000CMS, which is run by Dr. Mehmet Oz, Robert F. Kenny Jr., the president of the United States, they announced a new initiative that is going to make it much easier for you to keep track of your healthcare records, keep them all in one place, have access to those things, and ensure that you get better solutions faster.
00:36:01.000Joining us on the line to discuss is Dr. Oz.
00:36:03.000Dr. Oz, thanks so much for taking the time.
00:36:07.000I know we've talked about medical information in the past.
00:36:10.000I think the big message that the president wanted to convey yesterday, and he wanted to host this event, it was at the White House, was that you own your medical records.
00:36:26.000It's yours, and we want you to own it.
00:36:28.000And we're taking precautions to ensure that with the right security, you'll be able to get access to your medical records, which unlocks a whole bunch of opportunities to help Americans.
00:36:38.000So let's talk about what's changed in terms of information and how you get your medical records.
00:36:43.000And then we'll talk about the privacy aspect of this and the protections that are still going to be in place, because I know that's been the objection in large part.
00:36:49.000So let's talk first of all about the difficulties of actually getting your medical records.
00:36:52.000I mean, I think everybody has experienced this in the current medical system.
00:36:55.000You don't have kind of a one-stop shop where all your medical records are aggregated.
00:37:58.000We have all kinds of things that have allowed us to make our lives more comfortable using information as an asset.
00:38:05.000But information, as you know, can be sold as well.
00:38:07.000And it's a profit center for some companies.
00:38:09.000And so the health technology and specifically with your medical records, companies were holding on to them, arguing that that was data that they would be able to sell.
00:38:20.000They could use it for powerful purposes, but not always in your best interest.
00:38:24.000And even though there have been rulings and actually legislation in the first Trump administration forcing what's called interoperability, which means you have to share your data.
00:38:33.000You can't block it with make-believe reasons.
00:38:37.000You need to know what the hospital bill is going to be before you sign up, because otherwise you get stuck in this death spiral where you end up with bankruptcy liens.
00:38:45.000And that's what actually causes the number one bankruptcy cause in America is medical illness compounded with medical debt.
00:38:52.000So these are all the things that unfortunately have held us back over the last five years.
00:39:10.000No more waiting for Washington, frankly, Ben.
00:39:12.000It's about time that we actually have stepped up.
00:39:14.000And it happened yesterday with the president's leadership, Secretary Kennedy full-throated endorsement as well, in part because we think this is how Maha will happen.
00:39:21.000You'll get healthy again because we'll be able to give you information based on your medical records, if you wanted and only if you wanted, that will nudge you to do the right thing in your life.
00:39:30.000So you asked me a specific question, what's changed?
00:39:32.000The two things government must do is authenticate that you indeed, Ben Shapiro, want your medical records.
00:39:38.000We cannot pretend that we know who you are when there are five other Ben Shapiros all over the country.
00:39:42.000And so we have got that issue worked out.
00:40:32.000What do I have access to that I didn't have access to before more easily?
00:40:36.000Well, as an example, once you tell us that you want your information to be used for your benefit, companies that are making apps in the app store, Google Play, traditional consumer apps will be able to approach you and say, hey, Mr. Shapiro, we know you have a problem with your blood sugar.
00:40:51.000And here's a bunch of tools that we think will benefit you.
00:40:55.000And they're going to get paid if they're actually able to get your blood sugar down.
00:40:59.000Now, that helps you live longer, avoid heart attacks, avoid dementia, all the complications of diabetes.
00:41:04.000It helps the government, because I have to administer CMS.
00:41:08.000Medicare and Medicaid are in big trouble.
00:41:10.000I mean, Medicare Trust Fund will go bankrupt in seven years.
00:41:13.000Medicaid expenses increased 50% in the last five years.
00:41:17.000That's why it was so important to take the fraud, waste, and abuse out of it with the one big beautiful bill.
00:41:22.000And so those programs benefit because if you're not diabetic, on average, you cost $7,000 less to whatever insurance company is covering you, including Medicare and Medicaid.
00:41:31.000So that saves money for the American taxpayer.
00:41:40.000You might have thought fruit first thing in the morning was a good idea, but it turns out that you're better off eating nuts first thing in the morning or a low sugar product, even though the sugar comes naturally in a fruit, which is normally good for you.
00:41:50.000In your specific instance, it's not the best first choice.
00:41:53.000Now, all that information accrues, but it gets fed to me, your doctor, because now I'll have information about you that can help me guide you better when you come to see me in the office.
00:42:01.000And instead of me looking to decide, typing, I don't know, Ben, has it ever happened to you?
00:42:19.000And they're coding all these things to charge you more because they're paid based on how they code.
00:42:25.000Instead of actually focusing on you, that's going to go away.
00:42:28.000We're going to be able to gather information within the workflow of a doctor as he's taking care of you or she's managing your issues.
00:42:34.000And that's going to allow us to figure out how sick you are, how much should we pay the doctor for that, and allow the doctor to focus on you.
00:42:41.000And that's how we're going to deal with things like prior authorization, this heinous disliked problem.
00:42:47.000As you know, there was, you know, there was blood in the streets over this horrible practice, but the practice does have benefits when it's done right.
00:42:54.000So we've gotten all these companies together and asked them to, not ask them, told them that they need to figure out a solution to the prior authorization conundrum so patients and doctors aren't sitting around all day long trying to figure out if they're allowed to take care of an issue.
00:43:09.000That happens better if you have medical technology that's digital, because this way, when an insurance company is asked about where I queried about whether Ben Shapiro is allowed to have this medication for his diabetes, guess what happens?
00:43:26.000They can immediately adjudicate it like a credit card and give you authority to move forward.
00:43:30.000That's how the practice of medicine gets lubricated so it works better.
00:43:36.000So the big objection to all of this, presumably, has been questions about privacy, the suggestion that now companies are going to have access to information they didn't have access to before, or they're going to use your information in ways that you don't particularly like.
00:43:48.000How do you answer those concerns about patient privacy?
00:44:13.000And we just busted with the Department of Justice two weeks ago, this $15 billion multinational criminal organization that was taking the beneficiary numbers, the numbers that Medicare patients have, and using them to pierce our security systems.
00:44:29.000Now, because we've got a great fraud war room, and because we're doing the kinds of innovation that I just discussed that the president launched yesterday at the White House, we have the ability to stop these scams down relatively quickly.
00:44:42.000So of the $15 billion, 80% or so we were able to hold on to.
00:44:46.000But once the money leaves the door, Ben, it goes overseas.
00:44:49.000This one in particular seems to have a Russian link.
00:44:52.000Once it's in Moscow, you're not getting that money back.
00:44:54.000So the information we're talking about is going to be used to protect you as well.
00:44:58.000By the way, you can opt out of the whole system.
00:45:07.000And no information is going to be exchanged on you.
00:45:09.000We believe 90% of Americans will want information in the system to be used to help them if they're confident that it's secure.
00:45:17.000The same way your information is secure.
00:45:19.000And when you're going through an airport, for example, and use a clear test or one of the identification tools, it's going to be sort of the same way.
00:45:27.000In fact, those same companies are getting involved in this process.
00:45:30.000And we believe, and this is what happened yesterday, when you have the 60 top technology companies and health companies in the country, the biggest insurers, the biggest hospital systems, the biggest AI companies, they're all there.
00:45:43.000And they're all saying the same thing, which is, we're going to be meek.
00:45:47.000And this has been the pleat of them the whole time since the first day I took this position.
00:45:52.000Meek, as the Bible says, the meek shall inherit the earth.
00:45:55.000If you don't know what the word meek means, you might think that means weak or some other understanding of the phrase.
00:46:01.000To me, the word meek means you are a hard-nosed warrior.
00:46:05.000You've got a sword, but you decide, you decide to sheath that sword and put it away so that you can work with others to fix a bigger problem that's plaguing your community.
00:46:15.000That's what we're asking the medical technology community to do.
00:46:18.000Put all the stuff away that you use to fight each other.
00:46:55.000Every time we walk into this building, we see a quote on the wall from Hubert Humphrey.
00:46:59.000And it says, it is the moral obligation of government to take care of those at the dawn of life, our children, those at the twilight of life, our elderly, and those who are living in the shadows.
00:47:12.000This is the Judeo-Christian tradition of respecting humanity and its preciousness and taking care of everybody, no matter where they are in their life journey.
00:47:20.000To do that correctly, we have to focus on those populations, but we can't, for that reason, be throwing money at other issues or getting defrauded or losing money because we're inefficient and throwing it in the trash.
00:47:32.000That incineration of the American taxpayer dollar is ending in this administration.
00:47:36.000As you know, President Trump spoke beautifully yesterday, powerfully about how he needed industry to work together to deal with these issues.
00:47:43.000The power to convene is something that he represents in a very bold way.
00:47:47.000We have an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal making the same argument that the power to convene arguably is one of the greatest tools we have because without going through a long legislative process and Congress doesn't always want to move on some of these issues and the rules making process takes sometimes years.
00:48:03.000You can get companies to, in a very nimble way, address the needs of the American people if they know where they're headed.
00:48:08.000But the key goal here is to make sure that it's a vision, not a hallucination.
00:48:12.000And you know it's a vision when other people can see it.
00:48:15.000And Secretary Kennedy also spoke strongly about the fact that for Maha to live, to thrive, to grow, we have to be able to meet people wherever they are.
00:48:23.000That's what technology has done in other sectors of the U.S. economy.
00:48:26.000It needs to work for the American patient as well.
00:48:31.000And to me, on a personal level, the biggest thing here is the ability for people to quickly access preventative solutions.
00:48:38.000I mean, everybody who's spent any time looking at the healthcare situation in the United States knows that the number one lack is that people don't take these sort of preventative solutions that would stop the cost curve from building on them as they get older.
00:48:50.000If you're worried about Alzheimer's, there's stuff you need to do when you're in your 30s in order to prevent you from getting Alzheimer's.
00:48:55.000That's stuff like nutrition, that's stuff like the exercise, that stuff like taking, you know, going to see your doctor about issues when you're 30 that could affect you when you're 70 or 80.
00:49:04.000And when you just wait until the last minute.
00:49:06.000And that's one of the things that our healthcare system has really incentivized is because it's hard to get your records together, because it's difficult to kind of constantly monitor your own health.
00:49:15.000You wait until the issue actually materializes and wrecks your life, as opposed to what you're suggesting now and what you're attempting to do.
00:49:23.000If you make all this information more available to you, make it more transparent, and work with healthcare companies in order to ensure that you actually have options to do these things early.
00:49:31.000You're going to make your quality of life better and longer.
00:49:34.000Ben, you hit a point I want to highlight.
00:49:37.000Maha is about exercise and eating and spiritual development and being able to sleep because you've made peace with the world around you.
00:50:04.000So we want to, on your phone, within a year, meet you and show you stuff about yourself that you might not understand from your own medical records that we can help you with.
00:50:13.000And if you want to take supplements or you want to engage in different types of dietary practices, all that's great.
00:50:19.000We want to give you some advice on it.
00:50:20.000Again, all that information will flow back to you only if you want it.
00:50:23.000Security is a top priority, but it unlocks an opportunity to help Americans.
00:51:14.000If we can make it cool to watch your health, this is what Secretary Kennedy was saying yesterday, then we can actually make Maha come alive in your home.
00:51:22.000And maybe you might not be focused on those issues.
00:51:24.000Other families around you might be, but you'll finally get the bug as you see information about yourself that's actionable.
00:51:30.000And the Maha movement is primarily about mops worried about their families.
00:51:33.000We've made it hard to be healthy in America.
00:51:35.000Let's use technology to identify those issues.
00:51:38.000If there's mold in your house, if you're living in an area where there are toxins and there's a lot more illness or allergies than normally you would expect, we should inform you about that.
00:51:46.000But likewise, if you happen to have some autoimmune problem that's undiagnosed and we can use AI to start looking at the things that you're doing and help you figure that out, or frankly, just talk to you.
00:51:55.000Ben, you know what the number one cause of increased health bills in Medicare is?
00:51:59.000Being Lonely when there's no one around you, you have no one to crutch on, then you get scared.
00:52:04.000Your first resort is to call the ER or an ambulance.
00:52:07.000You know, that's the kind of adjustment we can make.
00:52:11.000I yesterday was, you know, was able to see some avatars based on AI evaluation of your medical records.
00:52:18.000Now, you need a doctor as well to help you deal with the emotional elements and triage to make sure it's accurate.
00:52:25.000But the conversation that I was having with these avatars, it's like you're talking to a doctor.
00:52:29.000And so if I can combine that information gathering exercise that a doctor needs to do first with an actual real doctor or nurse who can help you deal with the consequences of it, that actually saves a lot of time and money and allows our medical community to extress itself a bit more.
00:52:44.000Because in many parts of the country, we don't have enough doctors or nurses.
00:52:47.000That's what the one big beautiful bill is seeking to address with the $50 billion investment in the Rural Health Transformation Fund.
00:52:54.000That's an effort to give us the ability to get into local communities and help them get healthy again.
00:52:59.000In rural America, life expectancy is four years shorter than the rest of the country.
00:53:03.000So we really have a massive shift that needs to happen in the country.
00:53:07.000And the president's pledged that, and we're going to make it come true.
00:53:21.000Meanwhile, controversy has broken out over a proposal from Senator Josh Howley to push forward a stock trading ban.
00:53:29.000And honestly, I'm a little bit confused by the objections.
00:53:32.000So there's already a bill in place called the Stock Act.
00:53:37.000This is a bill that was originally called the Pelosi Act as a way of targeting Nancy Pelosi, who's gotten extraordinarily rich off of stock trading while she's been in Congress.
00:53:45.000To be fair, she was already rich before she went into Congress.
00:53:48.000Her husband is very wealthy and all the rest.
00:53:49.000But the Pelosi Act was retitled the Honest Act.
00:53:54.000What's the difference between the two acts?
00:53:55.000Well, I asked our sponsors over at Perplexity this question.
00:53:58.000The STOP Act prohibits members of Congress, congressional staff, and federal officials from using non-public information gained through official positions for personal financial benefit, including insider trading.
00:54:08.000Major features include reinforcing that existing insider trading laws apply to members of Congress and all federal officials and requiring prompt public disclosure of many financial transactions like stock trades rather than just annual reporting.
00:54:20.000The problem with the Stock Act is that the actual fines are basically de minimis, sometimes $200 per violation.
00:54:27.000No sitting lawmaker has been prosecuted under the Stock Act.
00:54:30.000So the Honest Act is supposed to go further.
00:54:33.000It bans stock trading entirely for all members of Congress and their spouses while in office.
00:54:38.000It broadens the trading ban to include the president and the vice president, not just members of Congress.
00:54:42.000President Trump was upset with this because, of course, he has large-scale stock holdings.
00:54:47.000This would not apply to the current president and vice president.
00:54:49.000It would only kick in, I believe, in the next term.
00:54:52.000Aims to close loopholes around direct trades and addresses enforcement shortcomings that have limited the Stock Act effectiveness.
00:55:00.000Now, there have been objections from the Trump administration and from some Republicans who say basically this is also going to be unenforceable.
00:55:06.000That what you're essentially saying is that you can't own stock at all.
00:55:09.000If you're a member of Congress, that you have to divest your stock.
00:55:12.000Now, the Honest Act does allow you to put your stock presumably into a blind trust.
00:55:16.000So you can take your money, put it in a trust, appoint the trustee, and then the trustee has control over the stock trading, and that creates sort of a firewall between you and your stockholdings.
00:55:26.000Critics will say that this means that if you're a member of Congress, well, now you are disincentivizing anybody who has large-scale stock holdings and is active in markets from being in Congress.
00:55:36.000Honestly, I think that Howley's argument is not a bad one, which is that you don't want people rigging the system on their own behalf in favor of their stock trading using inside information.
00:55:46.000Now, this libertarian perspective on this would be that insider information as a general ban is actually kind of foolish because when people trade on insider information, actually, it means that insider information becomes public faster than if they didn't trade on it because you just follow their trades, just follow Nancy Pelosi's trades, mirror what she's doing, and now you have access to the same insider information she does.
00:56:07.000And honestly, maybe that would be a better policy.
00:56:09.000Maybe the better policy would be immediate revelation of all stock trades by members of Congress and not a 30 to 45 day disclosure, like in real time.
00:56:19.000And that way, if you would just want to follow their trades, then you can follow their trades and you can see exactly what they're doing.
00:56:24.000If that were possible, that seems like that might be a good solution.
00:56:27.000In any case, President Trump was upset about this.
00:56:30.000He went after Josh Howey, suggesting that he is a second-rate senator.
00:56:36.000Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio called the effort a publicity show.
00:56:40.000Senator Moreno noted he'd co-sponsored the original Pelosi Act.
00:56:43.000He said it's important for us to restore faith in our institutions, but to just put a vote out there when we have literally no idea what we're voting for is gross incompetence.
00:56:50.000It's the most absurd process I've ever seen.
00:56:53.000And again, one of the critiques here is that the bill is not fully drawn up, that basically it was dumped out there with very little notice and that people don't even know what's in it.
00:57:05.000And so that is always a fair critique, and it happens often in Congress that nobody had a chance to actually look at the bill.
00:57:10.000But the generalized perspective, which is that members of Congress should not be trading on the information that they are in control of.
00:57:15.000If you're in control of the rules, you should not be trading on behalf of that.
00:57:18.000That seems like not a particularly bad idea, obviously.
00:57:21.000Josh Halley, the senator from Missouri, says this is a tough bill.
00:57:25.000Senator Scott made really clear he's opposed to this bill and he was attempting to kill the bill.
00:57:29.000That would have taken, it would have gutted all the bill, taken all of its key provisions out.
00:57:32.000We would have been left with just some study.
00:57:34.000And frankly, I think we're beyond time for studying.
00:58:20.000So in that sense, I'd like it, but I'd have to really see the, I'd have, you know, I study these things very carefully and this just happened.
00:58:30.000And what I do think is Nancy Pelosi should be investigated because what she has the highest return of anybody practically in the history of Wall Street, save a few.
01:00:25.000Meanwhile, speaking of insider information, apparently the director of the FBI, Cash Patel, announced yesterday that there are thousands of sensitive Trump-Russia probe documents inside burn bags in a secret room at the FBI, which is kind of shocking.
01:00:41.000According to Fox News Digital, sources say that the burn bag system is used to destroy documents designated as classified or higher.
01:00:49.000Sources told Fox News Digital multiple burn bags were found and filled with thousands of documents.
01:00:55.000And apparently one of the documents FBI officials found in that burn bag was the classified annex to former special counsel John Durham's final report, which includes the underlying intelligence he reviewed.
01:01:04.000The declassification of that classified annex is now being done in coordination between the CIA Director John Radcliffe, Cash Patel, DNI Tulsi Gabbard, A.G. Pambondi, and acting NSA Director William Hartman.
01:01:15.000And it will be transmitted over to the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, who will then release the document to the public.
01:01:23.000Sources exclusively briefed on the contents, including that the U.S. intelligence community had credible foreign sources indicating the FBI would play a role in spreading the alleged Trump-Russia collusion narrative before the Bureau ever launched its controversial crossfire hurricane probe.
01:01:42.000Presumably, as those details emerge, we will cover them.
01:01:45.000But again, RussiaGate is a very real scandal.
01:01:47.000And the fact is that there were people in the intelligence community who were pushing absolutely manufactured narratives originally stemming from the Hillary Clinton campaign.
01:01:56.000You wonder why Trust in Institutions is gone?